


I Don't Know How You're Supposed to Find Me Lately (But Keep Thinking Of Me, I'll Find You First)

by megyal



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-18
Updated: 2010-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/megyal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Telepathy IS totally the worst psychic gift ever... except when it isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Know How You're Supposed to Find Me Lately (But Keep Thinking Of Me, I'll Find You First)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naotalba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naotalba/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Telepathy Means Never Having Privacy When You're Jerking Off](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/833) by naotalba. 



> The 'Mature' rating is mostly for language; I hope you enjoy, naotalba.

Doug drawls, "It's like a vitamin boost for your brainwaves, think about it like that," and Patrick looks at him askance.

"Is it a roofie?" he asks, peering at the glossy little red pill lying in the middle of Doug's palm. "Something to make me hallucinate? Because Andy wouldn't like that." Andy treats Patrick like a helpless kid brother, probably on a scale involving Tiny Tim. He's full of useful advice, even now after all this time touring together; it would be kinda annoying, if Andy wasn't so intent about the whole thing.

Doug manages to appear shocked and shifty at the same time. "No! I mean... yeah, _no_. It's not hallucinogenic. Not in the way you think, though."

"Explain." Patrick folds his arms across his chest and narrows his eyes at Doug across the cramped table.

"Tried it out on one of the interns, once," Doug says, still holding out his hand. He stares at the glass of water by Patrick's elbow, as if he can force Patrick to take it through sheer mental power. "It... hmm. How do I put this. Makes you appreciate what they're thinking."

"Where'd you get it?" Patrick is intrigued. He reaches out and plucks the pill from Doug's hand, looking at it very closely. It appears perfectly harmless, like some kind of cough-and-cold medicine.

"Experimental stuff," Doug answers, which isn't really an answer at all. "It passed all the preliminary trials," he hastens to expound at Patrick's skeptical expression. "Trust me, it won't make you crazy or anything."

"Why are you giving _me_ this, though," Patrick muses, even as he's reaching for the glass of water.

"I just want you guys to start talking again," Doug says, and the tone of his voice is surprisingly sad, so much so that Patrick feels sorry for him. "You realize that you and Pete haven't been talking much?"

Patrick did realize that, but didn't think it had been possible to explain how he felt. It would just come out in a jumble of awkward words.

"I mean, _separate buses_?" Doug glances around, looking pained. "I mean, Pete has the dog on _his_ bus, but still. Next minute you'll be asking me to tell the other guys that you're quitting. And then we'll probably have to lock Pete up somewhere so no bad shit goes down. I can't deal with bad shit right now, honestly, especially if it relates to Pete. Fucker's getting me all grey-haired," he ends in a mutter.

Doug actually appears very upset, frowning down at Patrick's shoes discarded on the ground. Patrick puts the pill in his mouth, holding it on his tongue. There is a delicately sweet flavour about it.

"It's just for better communication," Doug says eagerly, now gazing at Patrick with unbridled hope. Patrick wants to tease him about it a little, but he just picks up the glass of tepid water.

Doug says, "Pete's really gonna understand you so much better after this."

Patrick thinks that Pete doesn't comprehend him nowadays (and doesn't care to) unless they're talking the language of lyrics and notes. He takes a mouthful of water and swallows the pill.

  
**\+ + +**   


While he doesn't get ill or starts spouting madly private thoughts (as he had half-feared), whatever is in that red pill is pretty insane stuff, as Patrick realizes when Doug says, "G-R-A-Y," quite randomly a few minutes later.

Patrick looks up from the magazine he had been perusing and blinks at him. "What?"

Doug has the good grace to flush. "You were thinking about what I said about Pete making me grey, and wondering what's the most popular version of the spelling of _grey_... so I answered. Sorry."

"I think it's G-R-E-Y," Patrick informs him. "And I wasn't thinking about that."

"You were!" Doug insists and when Patrick rewinds his mental tape a bit, he finds he _had_ been thinking of that; it hadn't been something on the top of his mind, though. It had been completely random, like one of the many leaves of thought floating in stream of his conciousness.

"That pill makes me broadcast what I'm _thinking_?" Patrick asks, a little aghast but not too surprised. In some aspects, Doug is just as self-serving and insane as Pete, with roughly the same resources.

Doug nods. "Yeah. I mean, that's supposed to happen. Didn't I tell you?"

"You did _not_," Patrick grits out and Doug gives him a honestly curious look.

"What did you think I meant by 'better communication'?"

"I don't know!" Patrick bursts out, thinking, _fuck, Pete's going to be crawling all over my head_.

Doug says in smug excitement, "He sure is!" and ducks when Patrick throws the magazine at him.

  
**\+ + +**   


It's not just Pete that is tuned into Patrick Mind Show, unfortunately. _Everyone_ is, particularly those who spend a lot of time with him. When he walks past some of the road-crew, they look around themselves quite pensively, as if someone invisible just whispered into their ear. Thank fuck they can't identify that voice as _his_ (and he has feeling that it sounds different from his speaking or singing voice), but the people who are well acquainted with _how_ he talks know exactly who they're dealing with.

"Hold on," Andy says, staring at him as Patrick is listing the very few ways in which it is totally nice to be a rock-star. They're waiting back-stage, lounging in a comfortable sofa; Patrick is gathering wool while fending off a rather urgent need to be back in his room on the bus, thoughts of getting off with his own hand invading his mind most inopportunely. "What was that third thing?"

"What third thing?" Patrick asks innocently, and bites the inside of his lip. Ah, fuck.

"That part about having your own space to choke the chicken in," Mixon chimes in helpfully. Patrick glances at Pete, who is giving him a fairly wall-eyed look.

"...big ballin'?" Pete's voice is a bare murmur, picking that very phrase from Patrick's contemplation of a rock-star's perks and jerks. The low tone of his voice means he is either genuinely surprised or gearing up for a good long laugh at Patrick's expense. Patrick wonders if he can lock it down, somehow, but Doug is over there shaking his head while looking pleased and primly shocked at the same time.

"What's going on?!" Joe wails in a mixture of desperation and surprised amusement. "Why am I thinking like Patrick!" Half-jokingly, he shuffles away from Patrick as if trying to evade some communicable disease, ending up almost in Tyler's lap. Tyler frowns and tries to shove Joe away, but Joe clings to him and shivers dramatically.

"Who said that?" Tyler asks, looking each of them in the face with a complaining Joe slung around his neck. "You guys sure are open about shit. I mean, Mix told me but I never--"

The call for them to take the stage comes at the best moment _ever_, in Patrick's opinion, and he gets to his feet quickly and almost sprints to the door. Pete, the quick little fuck, is at the head of the line before him, his hands plastered to the broad shoulders of one of their bodyguards. Pete looks back at him, his brown eyes wide with what looks like mockery on top and puzzlement below.

Patrick wonders, when he's singing, if they can hear the echo of their music in their heads, a feed-back loop from his own mind. They all seem to have incredible timing for the entirety of that show.

  
**\+ + +**   


The next day, Patrick consumes some of Andy's peanut butter and suffers through a verbal anthropological dissertation from him about how the females of the Hadza people actually trim their eyelashes, and how interesting that particular group is because they offer a wonderful glimpse into the hunter-gatherer lifestyle from ten centuries ago, and their language is isolate and how they might be one of the primary roots of the genetic human family tree... all because Patrick had vaguely wondered why humans needed eyelashes, if they were going to fall in one's eye anyway.

Mixon and Tyler had already escaped, but Patrick stayed because he was mostly polite and he'd kind of asked for it, anyway.

He's taking another spoonful of peanut butter as Andy begins to preach anarcho-vegan, noting how those who still follow the hunter-gatherer lifestyle have managed to circumvent the societal downfalls brought about by systematic domestication of plants and animals, when Pete pops into their bus and gives him a censorious stare, followed by an annoyed flicker of his gaze in Andy's direction. Patrick reads those signals quite fine: _why the fuck did you set him off?_, is what they indicate, which means that Pete had heard his musing as well.

Pete hoists himself up onto the counter, putting his ass near Patrick's cup of unappealing coffee and says, "So, you know we can all read your mind," over Andy's now-passionate exposition of individual autonomy and social obligations (seriously, how did he get from eyelashes to _that_?). Andy stops, looks offended and stalks off outside, probably to find someone more receptive; whether he's left because of Pete's interruption or Patrick's thought, Patrick isn't too sure. Probably both.

Patrick sips at his coffee, trying to dislodge some of the peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth. Can't they make peanut butter less sticky? There must be a way. "No, you can read, like, my mental noise. Believe me, I've been trying to get the driver to make a stop all night, and all I got was a laugh at my list of words that _rhyme_ with stop, which I didn't think I was thinking about until he added dust-mop to the list."

That had been kind of funny though, and had ended up with Patrick singing the chorus for the Ruff Riders Anthem. The bus-driver told him that he should stick to what he knew, and they'd ended up rapping One More Road To Cross for about a mile or so.

Pete looks confused. "How can you not know what you are thinking about?"

"Dude, it's mental noise, I'd go crazy if I concentrated on it," Patrick says and laughs a little, wriggling because the ink on the tag of his 'tag-less, itch-free' t-shirt is actually kind of itchy and makes the skin of his beck feel irritated. They should look into that; maybe put the tag near the bottom of the shirt instead, so it won't--

"That's great for you, but I can't block it out." Pete gets down and prowls around the small lounge-area like a caged cat. "Also, why are you not freaking out?"

Patrick scratches his neck, stupid lying tag-less tee. "Oh, Doug warned me something like might happen. He gave me some kind of experimental medication, it's supposed to encourage better communication. He's still a little worried that us asking for separate buses is like, one step away from announcing the band is broken up. There were Izzy Stradlin references." Seriously, if he gets his own clothing line, he's going to make sure the tags are printed somewhere else.

"Which makes me the Axl Rose in this scenario. Nice." Pete throws his hands up in the air, an agitated movement, then puts them down by his side again, clenching his fists. "He's never said a word to me about it, and he's on my goddamn bus!"

Patrick wonders who would win in a fight between Doug and Pete; Doug is larger but Pete fights nasty. "Because you would flip out on him, as we both know," Patrick sighs and sips at his nasty coffee again. "Look, this stuff'll wear off in a week or two." He's not too sure of that part, actually, but luckily Pete doesn't seem to pick up on his doubt. Maybe because it's too much on top and Pete (and the others) seem to be reading stuff that falls below. He feels a little testy, but not too much, mostly because he can't get over how weird the coffee is tasting. "Just deal with my mental noise, if Doug asks, say you've gained a new appreciation of my way of thinking, and go back to your own bus."

Pete looks at him with an unreadable expression and then departs. Oddly, the next morning, Patrick finds that the coffee-pot has been cleaned and the coffee tastes _awesome_. He gives some to Doug, who is feeling bereft at the fact that Hemmy pissed on one of his coolest fedoras. Patrick has no doubt that Pete is to blame.

  
**\+ + +**   


Patrick appreciates how fucking awful Doug's endeavour turns out when Joe and Andy do an experiment and find out that Patrick's stream-of-conciousness is almost completely indistinct at a radius of ten feet or so. They can still _hear_ them, Andy says, but it sounds like a radio being played in a room down the end of a hall. Joe attends to this distance with the precision of a laser tape-measure, just because of that whole thing with the sound-tech.

In Patrick's defense, the sound-tech for the place they played that night was uncommonly hot; he didn't flirt with Pete at all, which is always a plus in Patrick's books. He smiled at Patrick and paid attention when Patrick was trying to explain how they wanted stuff done. He had really pretty green eyes and a clever habit of flicking a coin into the air. When it fell from him once and he bent to retrieve it, Patrick tilted his head and took some time to appreciate the curve of his ass beneath his jeans. The tech hadn't looked back, but Patrick had turned around and found himself to be the subject of about five sets of wide-eyed gazes, all with varying degrees of contemplation, surprise and horror.

"What?" Patrick had asked and tried to recall what he had been thinking, a necessary skill these days. He stifled a groan; it had been pretty lecherous, and he tried to save face: "It's totally not a big deal. Most straight guys think stuff like that now and again, I'm sure."

Pete, of course, had nodded and Patrick felt a rush of grateful warmth for about three seconds, until Joe said very loudly, "No. We kinda don't," and the others, KTC and Doug and Dirty, even Andy, agreed.

So Joe and everyone else tries to keep his orbit out of the Patrick zone, and Doug does one better; he actually skips town like a thief in the night, claiming that he has some really important stuff to catch up on back at the office. Pete is unreasonably livid for some reason, and calls Doug on the hour every hour to berate him. They all stay away and Patrick is kind of cool with that. Everyone is stuffed up on the pot-and-dog bus, even Andy, who complains that he's sensitive enough to pick up on the _images_ that Patrick projects. Patrick doesn't really believe him; Andy can exaggerate, sometimes.

What is even better is that he has the bus to himself and he's sure that no-one is tuned into his thoughts as he lies in bed. The bus-driver is quite adept at ignoring him by now, the same way he probably ignores their shenanigans when they're traveling, relegating them to the background noise of the bus-engine and the radio, which is now playing some Drifters' song... _Hello Happiness_; Patrick twists around the baseline and sends it through a punk-rock machine.

Therefore, Patrick isn't too worried when he slips his hand down the waistband of his boxers and gives his cock a few leisurely tugs. He always hums when he's beating off, and he had trained himself to not to do that during the band days; but now he can hum as much and as loudly as he likes, even when there seems to be no proper tune and it ends up all breathless and whiny when he comes. All that is running in the top of his mind right is the faint tune of of his growing composition, which blooms with the heat pooling in his groin; and the melody of a too-wide smile, and the staccato of a nasal laugh, the hard thumping of a kick-drum which is how his heart sometimes gets when honey-brown eyes lock with his. He smiles and hums as his fingers slide over the hardness of his dick, thumbing over the head and rubbing the precome around.

He doesn't think about who he's focusing on as he tenses up. It would be a little distressing to note that he's been thinking of them that way from the first time they met.

  
**\+ + +**   


He enters Pete's bus the next morning, grateful to find only Pete there. He's not in the mood for Joe's frantic scrabbling to get out of the zone. Pete looks up from where he's curled up on the sofa, watching television. He can tell that Pete hasn't slept all night; his eyes are red-rimmed and the battered book he scribbles in is on the shelf of the window over the sofa. When Pete spots him, however, he gets up and runs over to Patrick, nearly knocking him over as he puts his arms around Patrick's neck.

Automatically, Patrick holds onto his waist.

"Patrick Patrick Patrick," Pete babbles, "You wrote the most awesome song last night." He starts humming, and Patrick listens, tilting his head curiously because he _knows_ this song; his small smile fades as he realizes just what Pete meant by Patrick _writing last night_. Pete... Pete had been _listening_. Even from outside of the zone, Pete had still been snooping around Patrick's head, knowing when Patrick was jerking off just so he could make a big deal out of it.

He draws back and punches Pete right in the stomach. "I can't believe you, you eavesdropping fucker!" he yells and then storms off the bus.

He goes inside their current venue to find Andy tapping thoughtfully in the dressing room, and sits far too close to him, thinking about how much he hates it when Pete does shit like that. Andy stops practicing and puts an arm around him. Andy, who lives with so many guys, knows the rudiments and value of a proper manly snuggle.

"What did he do?" Andy asks and squeezes his shoulders. Patrick feels a bit like some soft roll of toilet-paper. "And no, you're not like a roll of toilet-paper at all. You're not that squishy, sorry."

"I was..." Patrick squirms a bit, and Andy squeezes him again.

"It's okay," Andy says faintly. "I get what you mean."

"And he was listening." Patrick pouts. "He's going to be so fucking loud about it." He eyes Andy's drumsticks and wonders if there's time for him to go take out his anger on the kit.

"First of all, there's no shame in masturbation," Andy lectures. Patrick nods obediently. "And second of all, if Pete was going to make a big deal of it, he would have done it already."

Patrick swallows and nods. That's true. Pete would have probably made a banner and hung it up somewhere.

"Thirdly, if Pete knew exactly what you were up to, then we would never hear the end of it," Andy said. "He'd tell me as soon as I got up this morning. Trust me on this one."

"Okay, okay." Patrick tries to wriggle out from under Andy's arm, but Andy holds him firm.

"Like most human beings, he's a jerk, but sometimes he's not. And don't mess with the kit right now, please, we just got it set up the way I like. And we have sound check soon," Andy says and then lets him go, just as Tyler bounds in with someone's laptop to show them this stupid clip of a cat. Patrick blinks at it, then goes off to find Pete.

He apologises, kind of. He hadn't meant to hit Pete in the stomach so hard, but he had been really surprised.

Pete, of course, confirms what he and Andy had known: "Are you kidding me, I would have fucking interrupted you."

He punches Patrick on the shoulder, very lightly; payback, of a sorts. Patrick smiles, but it feels weird on his face.

"Yeah, I figure if you had known I wanted a little privacy, you wouldn't have done anything as nice as just quietly listen in from another bus. You would have, what, called me and conferenced in your mom? Had Joe stick the fire extinguisher nozzle under the door and turn it on? Quoted 'Real Genius' at me until I craved popcorn too much to go on?"

Popcorn; Patrick wants some now, actually. Or some gum. Strawberry-flavoured.

Pete, for his part, contemplates all the interruption options before stating, "Called you and pretend I didn't know what you were doing, but casually mention I'd installed cameras, I think."

Patrick nods; that's actually a good one, he'd completely freak out. Or maybe grape-flavoured, he likes seeing how the purple lightens when he's blowing bubbles. Then, he blinks at Pete as the fucker starts to wriggle and jive in place.

He starts to do that shit any time he and Patrick are having a conversation. It's weird, but not unbearably so. Patrick is comforted, at least, when he finds about a week's supply of grape bubble-gum thrown on his bed in a very careless manner.

  
**\+ + +**   


The song becomes kind of a joke between them, and when Andy demands why they both giggle whenever one or the other of them hum the tune, they bring him in on the festivities; it becomes even funnier when he taps out the rhythm that Pete said Patrick had made up. Patrick honestly doesn't remember that, but if Pete says so, then it's so. Joe doesn't get it and they won't tell him, because Andy says his delicate heteronormative brain is still in shock and they should spare him the agony.

It continues to be hilarious, even when Patrick made Pete laugh uncontrollably right into the mike when they were in Houston, just by plucking the first four notes of the riff. Pete had stumbled over to Patrick, still guffawing, and Patrick had to hold him up, grinning at a confused Joe over Pete's spiky hair. Then, he had been distracted when Pete had straightened up and gazed right in his face, so near that his warm breath had brushed against Patrick's cheek. Patrick pushed him away, grinning widely and thinking of the song, how _I love you_ had echoed around the beat. The song was how he felt nearly all the time.

Thankfully, the rest of the band didn't pick up that part.

It's downright rib-busting until he stumbles over Pete waylaying Dirty for a prank, and Pete sings the lyrics to him in a very distant manner as he peers around the wall.

It hits Patrick like a Pete-shaped train. He had been working on hiding his thoughts, because after all this time that experimental shit hadn't worn off and Patrick is taking steps to make sure that his Social Security number (sung to the tune of Little Red Corvette) and his email password (a mixture of numbers and the line _take your protein pills and put your helmet on_) are firmly protected. It seems to be working, for Joe breached ten-foot perimeter the other day by mistake and had stared at Patrick for a moment before saying gleefully, "I can't hear anything!" Yet, here's Pete like some kind of mind-hacker, singing the lyrics that Patrick had been building on top of their funny riff. He had no plans to share them with Pete, he's not the lyricist, but Pete's singing them as if he's heard the song on the radio a million times.

In a way, he has; he's so close and Patrick wants him closer, even though he knows what a huge undertaking that is.

He only manages to stammer out, "You didn't-- You couldn't-- How did you--" and Pete puts down the bucket of questionable water and looks at him. Where had he gotten a bucket from? Who had been stupid enough to give it to him? Pete's gaze shifts from puzzled to surprised to sympathetic, all in an instant.

"Why didn't you just tell Doug to fuck off, when he offered you the drug?" he asks and Patrick looks away, staring at the nearest wall. He can hear Dirty hollering as he hunts for Pete, but it's likely that he won't venture near this secluded little half-corridor unless Pete calls for him.

"Sometimes," Patrick says, "I get jealous, I guess. I get you, the way I don't get anyone else, but sometimes it seems like every teenage girl with a modem gets you. I always say I think in music and everyone else thinks in words, and I just thought maybe this would prove I was wrong, that I'm not such a freak after all." He blinks rapidly, turning away a little. Something appears to be in his eyes; damned lashes, not doing their work.

"But you do think in music," Pete points out in a tone that is so gentle and so comforting that Patrick lets out a nervous giggle. Of course he thinks in music. That's part of who he is. He's been kind of an idiot as well, because Pete.... Pete _loves_ music. And he loves Patrick because of and in spite of it. He loves Patrick enough to really want to know his thoughts and adore a song that Patrick made for him, even though he doesn't know it. Adores it so much even though it's probably been an ear-worm for him for the past couple of months. The realization is overwhelming.

Pete's hand is on his shoulder, trying to turn him back. "No, wait, listen, Patrick, you think in music and it's awesome and amazing and I thank god for it, because my words would be useless without it."

Patrick is shaking and even though he tries to resist Pete's insistent tugging, he feels too weak. When he's turned around, Pete is looking at him with a small smile and when he bends close. He's kissing Patrick in a moment and Patrick stands in shock for about three whole beats before he kisses back.

Pete groans a little and then pulls away when Dirty yells for him again. "Wait for me at your bus," he whispers. He grabs his bucket and darts around the corner of the wall.

Patrick makes his way back to the bus in a daze. He walks pretty slowly, but how Pete gets there before him is still a mystery, sitting cross-legged on Patrick's bed with an expectant smile. When he pulls Patrick to lie down with him, he says, "Do you know that there's music in nearly all your thoughts? Like a constant orchestra? It's awesome," and he kisses Patrick again, deep and slow.

"No? I did not know that," Patrick manages to say against his lips; only Pete would think something like that was awesome. He's almost done unbuckling Pete's belt before pausing. "Are you... I mean, the above the waist thing--"

"Currently under review," Pete tells him smugly. When he slides his fingers underneath Patrick's shirt, he looks at Patrick and says, "Make music for me."

  
**\+ + +**   


Pete plays his masturbation song the next day, slowed all the way down to a sensuous bass line that Pete struggles with a bit; he manages to get through it in one piece, though. Patrick gapes at him, because that was how it played in his head when they had slid against one another last night. Pete grins, drops him a wink and saunters away.

_fin_


End file.
